


The Fool (Reversed)

by UnFunny (Quippy)



Category: Persona 5
Genre: M/M, Not Beta Read, Persona 5 Protagonist Has A Palace, Ren makes bad decisions, akechi wears an ugly sweater, at least for most of it, implied persona 5 protagonist has a palace, soft goro akechi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:28:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26703712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quippy/pseuds/UnFunny
Summary: The Fool (Reversed): A person taking too many risks and acting recklessly. Someone acting spontaneously without regard for the consequences of their actions, engaging in activities that put themselves and others at risk.Ren’s playing with fire. Has been for a long time now, fingers already burned and flames licking at the walls but he still can’t put down the matches.Akechi said it felt like there was a bond between them once.It made the threat seem worth it.
Relationships: Akechi Goro & Persona 5 Protagonist, Akechi Goro/Amamiya Ren, Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Comments: 16
Kudos: 195





	The Fool (Reversed)

It’s not a fight, not really. Fight implies arguments, retorts, a back and forth as each side gives and gains ground. 

So no, it’s not really a fight that has Ren stomping down the stairs and through the cafe - ignoring Sojiro’s worried  _ hey _ \- as he shoves his way through the door and into the chilled night air. No one chases after him, which is both expected and exasperating because he couldn’t make it more clear if he had it written in the sky that  _ he is not okay with this plan. _

The others are determined though. Determined and certain in that way only those who have no idea what’s really at risk can be. They think that gambling with his life is fine because they can’t really understand how anything could go wrong. Even after Okumura. Even after they came face to face with failure, they still  _ stupidly _ believe they have a handle on the whole mess of a situation. They think they understand what’s at stake and how things will play out and that they are the masterminds of their own fate.

And nothing Ren says - his apprehension about their half baked, over complicated plan, his rightfully pointing out that the police could just as easily kill him before Sae even has a chance to speak to him, his attempts to make them consider that trying to  _ write code _ for a  _ magic phone app _ might not work - goes flying over their heads.

It’s  _ infuriating _ .

They call him their Leader but it’s no better than just another nickname to get thrown around. Just another way to say Joker or Wild Card. They pay lip service to following his lead but he knows them better than to think that if he ever disagreed with what they wanted to do they would just push on their chosen paths anyway. Okumura was the most obvious example. He’d tried - more than once - to get them onboard with changing the heart of Haru’s fiance and leaving it there until they had a better handle on the larger situation. Come back to the fast food moguel later when the itching sense of  _ wrong _ was no longer hovering at the back of Ren’s mind. 

Even before that though he knew. Knew that his relationships with them were like rivers, all flowing one way. He loves them. Wholly and completely and - most importantly - without belief in that love ever really being reciprocated in the way he needs. 

The Phantom Thieves rely on him to be what each of them want him to be. A mirror held up to reflect back to them everything they want to see, to hear, to be reassured of. They don’t want Amamiya Ren. They want someone,  _ anyone, _ to listen to them and tell them all the things they need to hear. They’re no different than the others he has come to make deals with in Tokyo. More interested in what Ren can give them than in Ren himself, just like everyone else in his life.

Almost everyone.

He’s shivering by the time he comes to a familiar apartment door. He left his coat and scarf back at LeBlanc and made it through an entire train ride and ten minute walk with nothing but his long sleeve shirt to keep him warm. His hands are starting to ache from the cold, the snow that had been warned of in the morning news had arrived, chilling his bones and dampening his hair.

He knocks on the door and waits while snowflakes find purchase on his shivering frame. He isn’t left waiting long, the door snapping open wide without hesitation to reveal Akechi Goro in all his bedraggled glory. 

The ugly looking sweater and flannel pants, the smattering of freckles revealed by the absence of makeup, the hands gloriously bereft of gloves. Ren takes it all in and feels fond familiarity warm him. Akechi looks open and soft in the low light of the apartment behind him, the normal armor he wears during the day put away.

It’s late, Ren realizes, a sharp awareness of the darkness that chokes the sky above settling in on him. Late enough that the detective was already working on his nightly routine before bed. There was a bit of green face cleaner stuck in the corner of his nose, cheeks and brow still damp from being washed. His hair is pulled up in a ponytail with a headband in place to keep any stray locks out of the way. The band has cat ears sewn onto it.

It had been the cutest thing Ren had ever seen when the two of them had been killing time together in one of the various shops in Shibuya and he’d bought it for Akechi without a second thought. He didn’t think the detective would ever actually wear it. Seeing it now is enough that Ren doesn’t even notice the cold anymore.

“Amamiya?” Akechi asks, there’s surprise in his gaze as he looks Ren over, red eyes catching on the faint shivers racking Ren’s body.

“I forgot my phone at LeBlanc.” He says, as if that would explain anything. “Can we talk?”

Akechi steps back, an invitation that’s so familiar at this point that Ren doesn’t even pause as he walks forward into the warmth of the apartment. It’s not his first time coming to Akechi’s place, not even the first this past week, something he’s never told any of his other friends. Not even Morgana knows he’s been there before, or is even aware that Ren has Akechi’s address. It’s one of those things that Ren has guarded close to his chest, stolen moments that he keeps secret just for himself. He tries not to think about the fact that most of the secrets he keeps from his friends revolve around Akechi.

“You seem to have forgotten more than your phone.” Akechi says wryly, watching as Ren tugs off his shoes. There’s a furrow between the brunette’s brows, so light that anyone else might have missed it. For Ren though, someone who has made it more than just a pastime mapping the micro expressions of Akechi Goro’s pretty face, it’s a rare show of honest concern. “Did you really come all the way from LeBlanc without your coat?”

Ren gives a lazy shrug, catching the faint growl of frustrating Akechi almost smothers at his recalcitrance. The noise makes a smile pull at Ren’s lips. He’s always found too much pleasure in getting Akechi to break the facade of charming civility and let the sharpness that lurked beneath come to the forefront.

“I was too mad to notice I forgot everything until I was already at the station.” He admits, allowing Akechi to herd him towards his perfect, oversized kitchen. “I’m lucky I had my wallet on me to get on the train.”

The kitchen is a luxury entirely wasted on a boy who routinely fails at boiling eggs and only ever really uses the space to heat premade meals from the convenience store down the street. The kitchen is all fine granite counters and state of the art cooking appliances in spotless stainless steel that Ren just  _ itches _ to get his hands on. Akechi has the gaul to leave a container of instant coffee right there on the counter, as if he knew Ren was coming and wanted to be sure to irritate him in as petty a way as he can. 

Ren has imagined having control of the space to bring to life various culinary masterpieces more than once in his visits there. The closest he ever gets is Akechi allowing him to brew LeBlanc quality coffee for the two of them when Ren comes to visit. He would bet that the only thing fresh in Akechi’s entire apartment are the blue mountain coffee beans Akechi bought with everything else needed to put Ren to work as an in-house barista.

Akechi doesn’t seem interested in coffee tonight though. Instead he pokes Ren into taking a seat on one of the tall island stools before going to work on making tea, tugging off his headband and tossing it on the kitchen island as if Ren hadn’t noticed him wearing it already. 

“I know you said you want to talk.” The chestnut haired boy says as he pulls two cups down from the cupboard. “But you look cold enough that I doubt you’ll get anything out between those chattering teeth until I get you warmed up.”

There’s a pause as the words leave him, red eyes darting to meet Ren’s in a faint show of dread. Ren only rubs his hands together in an attempt to get feeling back into his numb fingers, too tired from the events of the night to chase the dangling thread. Allowing the potential for flirtation to slide into empty air, more than anything else, seems to have the detective alarmed.

“Not a single innuendo? This must really be serious.” Akechi says, the lightness of his tone not hiding the concern that Ren knows he doesn’t want to show. “Was the fight with the rest of your Phantom Thieves really that bad?”

“Didn’t say it had anything to do with them.” Ren says, just to be contrary. Akechi gives him a narrow eyed look and he relents with a sigh. “Yeah.” He admits, fingers drifting up to tug at the ends of his wild fringe. A bad habit he’s never tried hard enough to break. “It was bad.”

Akechi makes a soft noise that Ren can’t quite translate and focuses on pouring them tea. “Tea first.” He says, “Then we can talk.”

Ren is content to stay seated in the kitchen curled around a cup of jasmine oolong but Akechi isn’t having it. The other boy tugging him along to the living room and the cozy heated Kotatsu that dominates the room. There are a dozen or so second hand paperbacks piled on top of it, yellowed with age and smelling of lazy afternoons. Akechi tells people in interviews that he prefers mystery novels when he reads, but Ren knows that the other boy’s true literary love lies with the scifi and fantasy genres. They’ve spent a few rainy afternoons reading Le Guin novels aloud to each other while sipping hot chocolate, sharing a blanket and pretending that they both thought nothing but a friendly rivalry lay between them. 

Ren treasures those moments, few and stolen as they are. He hides them in his heart, a dragon ready to fight and kill for his hoard.

Akechi pulls the plush blanket folded along the back of the couch down and settles it over Ren’s chilled shoulders as they both tuck in under the Kotatsu. Ren doesn’t hesitate to shift the blanket so that it’s settled around the both of them, forcing Akechi to shuffle closer, their shoulders gently bumping. The tv is muted, the nature documentary on great white sharks silent as it softly casts the room in hues of vibrant blue that reminds him of the few times they’d slipped away from their busy lives to go forget themselves at the aquarium.

Akechi, Ren muses as he gets warm, is the kind of predator that’s used to laying in wait. He doesn’t  _ like _ being patient but he can be when the hunt is promising. He seems to find this - the promise of drama and discord between Ren and the rest of the Thieves - a worthy use of that patience and allows Ren to sit and work out his thoughts for a long time.

They sit in silence as they sip at their tea and Ren allows himself to bask in the warmth that emanates from Akechi. Curls gentle hands around the quiet moment and tuck it away with the rest. 

He is a thief at heart, and he finds his greatest joy lies in stealing away Akechi’s time and attention.

He tries not to think too much about how very screwed he is. How screwed he’s been. How disappointed and angry his friends would be if they found out. He leans into Akechi’s warmth rather than think about it. Allows himself to lose himself to the fragrant steam curling up from his mug and the comfort of the dangerous predator that lays in wait beside him.

Turning to Akechi hadn’t been a conscious decision when he left LeBlanc. Far more an instinctive drive that had led him through the bitter, angry, frustrated haze the night’s meeting had left him in. It was a familiar path to follow when he found himself alone, unhindered by his feline chaperone or the responsibility for the emotional well being of the small army of misfits that had been thrust on his shoulders over the difficult months since his arrival in Tokyo. 

He’ll get an earful when he eventually returns, especially if they learn just where he’s actually gone. His meetings with Akechi are known by the Thieves, something they’re fine with in the understanding that it brought them closer to their goals. But that acceptance would not last if they knew the extent of how much time he actually spent with Akechi, if they suspected the intent behind that time was more than just spying on a threat.  _ This: _ turning to Akechi for comfort, curling up in the detective’s space, drinking in Akechi’s jasmine tea and dangerous company. This wasn’t something the others wouldn’t be okay with.

Ren’s playing with fire. Has been for a long time now, fingers already burned and flames licking at the walls but he still can’t put down the matches.

Akechi said it felt like there was a bond between them once. 

It made the threat seem worth it.

A lot of people have claimed to feel a connection to Ren over the months. Homeroom teachers and airshop owners and psychics in the redlight district. Even the other Thieves have taken their turns at it. They tell him that they feel a bond between themselves and Ren, a link like a chain binding them together. He always nods and agrees, let’s them smile warmly and feel reassured, but he’s never really sure he felt it the way they describe. A binding chain, a blood oath. For him it’s all just rivers. Everything he is flowing from his heart towards theirs, draining him dry. 

He’s never felt a steady bond between himself and someone else that he feels he can put his faith in. Never found something that feels real and solid and certain beneath his feet, a connection that stands strong and in place, linking him to someone else like a bridge. He’s only known the water that slips through his fingers, the sense of losing more and more of himself to the needs of others. There’s never been anyone in his life that he’s ever felt as if the connection was built from both sides.

Except for what he feels with  _ him. _

Dangerous, lethal, beautiful Akechi Goro who has ruined countless lives and will undoubtedly ruin many more to achieve his goals. Who will kill Ren, when all is said and done and his convoluted plan comes to ahead. The boy is plastic smiles and sweet poison words, beguiling charm hiding such furious, feral rage beneath. Akechi’s created an identity for himself that the world can’t help but love. Detective Prince, TV Idol, Paragon of Justice. 

Ren can see past it though, beneath the mask Akechi wears and the mask beneath that. He has seen that bitter rage in the other boy, that furious hunger for things the world was too cruel to give him. He’s seen beneath that too, down to the fragile child battered and broken and abandoned by everyone that should ever have loved him.

A shoulder presses reassuringly against his own. Akechi’s eyes are dark in the strange light of the room when Ren looks at him. The other boy carefully mapping every detail of Ren’s face. Ren has seen the very depths of Akechi’s soul, but he knows better than to think he made it out unseen himself. He feels bare and vulnerable beneath Akechi’s unusually gentle scrutiny.

It ends up being easy, so easy, to just allow the iron grip he has on himself go lax, to give up the pretense and let the words that have been burning at the back of his mind slip out, soft and low. Something just to be shared between the two of them.

“I know you’re the Black Mask.” 

It’s not how he wanted to do this. Not how he planned - in the many times he imagined this conversation - to start things off. The words leave him anyway though, and he can only make peace with it at this point.

He pulls his glasses off and tosses them on the table beside Akechi’s books. A declaration as pointed as the glove that was tossed to him not so terribly long ago. He wants to make sure Akechi sees what needs to be seen. Wants to make sure that the other boy looks into his eyes and knows that it isn’t a ploy, isn’t some game Ren is trying to play. He removes his mask and turns to meet red eyes and allows himself to be  _ seen. _

Beside him Akechi has gone still. Every muscle strung tight as piano wire. A predator seizing up in preparation for a fight.

Akechi flashes his teeth in an impression of a smile. There’s no amusement or emotion in it, just carefully arranged muscles implying such things. Picture perfect, ready for TV. His voice is high and sweet, the tone he uses to wind up school girls and coax news anchors into saying what he wants. 

“I don’t know what you mean.” He says, words as light as a song.

Ren sighs. 

He expected this - Akechi was a twisting, turning, changing force. Never one to take the direct path when there was a wilder route to follow. It was the crux of who he was. The reason the thieves were in the precarious position they were in, guided along the convoluted route Akechi had carved out for them. Ren had hoped that Akechi wouldn’t try to use his too sweet words and painful plastic smiles on him, but had been prepared for the inevitability anyway.

“Futaba bugged your phone. We heard you talking about your plan.” He says plainly. Akechi is overly prepared for every possibility his overactive mind can conceive of but more often than not, Ren has found, rarely knows what to do with a direct approach. “And we already knew before then that you’ve had the MetaNav for months longer than what you told us. My guess is years longer, from what I was able to find out on the shut downs.”

There is some part of him that demands that he  _ stops talking.  _ It demands he step back in line, stay in his lane, get up and leave and return to the Phantom Thieves and their  _ shitty goddamn plan _ and their willingness to gamble his life away. It’s just an echo though, a faint recollection of that part of him that was ground beneath Arsene’s bladed heel the moment Ren ripped that mask from his face and felt the chains that had been weighing him down snap and shatter. 

He’s not that person anymore.

Akechi sets his tea down beside Ren’s with a slow, careful precision. The smile is gone and in its place a cold that  _ burns. _ This conversation is going to hurt. They are going to tear each other to pieces, rip each other apart until there is nothing left of each other but tears and ash and understanding.

Ren can’t wait.

He wonders when exactly he became a masochist. 

Probably the moment he realized he was in love with the dangerous boy seated beside him.

“Ah.” Akechi says, voice smooth as glass and just as likely to slice Ren open. “Then this is what, the proclamation of war? The infiltration before the cavalry breaks down my door?”

“No.” He says, “No one knows I’m here. No one even knows that I have your address.” Ren leans back on the couch behind him. Languid, lazy and exposed. “You could kill me right now in your ugly sweater and they’d never know what happened.”

Akechi snorts and it almost sounds like real amusement. 

“They’d know. They just wouldn’t be able to prove it.” His red gaze is calculating as it sweeps over Ren. His hands flex and twitch, gaze landing for longer than necessary on Ren’s throat. Strangulation wouldn’t be the worst death Ren has imagined for himself over the past year, though he is mildly surprised to see Akechi considering it. The detective’s plan before had been to shoot Ren in the head, rather than make it appear that he’d hung himself in his cell later.

Perhaps he just didn’t want to deal with the mess in his apartment. Ren can understand that at least, even if he can’t quite bring himself to feel fear in the face of a very real and very dangerous threat.

“What is this then?” Akechi asks, seeming to decide not to kill Ren just yet. “An attempt to beg me to your side? A bid to  _ save me _ by getting me to join your thieves for real?” 

There’s vitriol and fury in his words, the anger that Ren has glimpsed simmering beneath the surface but was so rarely allowed to actually see unhindered. It makes Akechi’s eyes bright and glittering, even in the low light of the room. 

“Wouldn’t that just be you saving me in the end?” He asks, head tilting some trying to parse the expression on Akechi’s face. “You’ve already won against the Thieves at this point. You know who we are, have evidence of it, have the police, the Prosecutors’ Office and by my estimation at least one high level politician in your pocket. If I ask you to join us, really join us, it seems like that would be more for our benefit than yours.”

Ren watches as Akechi’s lips twitch, an ugly amusement that the other boy only just kicks back. 

“Indeed.” He says, and despite his best efforts Ren can still hear the faintest note of delight in his cool voice. “Then what, precisely,  _ do _ you want?”

_ What do you want? _

The question Ren has been pointedly not asking himself for months now. Between Palaces and runs through Momentos, school days spent skulking beneath the radar of the judgemental student body and quiet nights staring up at invented constellations of glow in the dark stars. The question that has an answer, an answer that he  _ knows _ but hasn’t let himself acknowledge.

There are many things he wants. He wants the freedom of being a Phantom Thief. He wants the way he feels like himself in the Metaverse, sinking into his body and feeling like he can’t in the real world. He wants the danger of a Palace infiltration, the exhilaration of the Reaper hunting him down in the depths of Mementos, the delight of a heist well done. He wants his friends to be happy, he wants the world to be right and he wants...

“More than I can have.” He says at length.

Akechi snorts. “That’s not an answer.”

Ren can only shrug. 

“Fair enough.” He admits. 

It’s not a satisfying response and Akechi’s patience is a conditional thing at the best of times. He wants something to sink his teeth into and Ren is always too eager to give the pieces of himself away. If he was more honest, he’d probably be able to say that those self sacrificing instincts were what led him to where he is now: standing on the precipice of ruin, the trust of everyone who’s ever called him friend already set to shatter on the rocks below.

“You.” He says after a moment. His better judgment has already left him for the night and he’s already telling Akechi all the things he should keep unsaid.

The word slips into the still air between them, not heavy but not so light as to drift by unnoticed. It’s an honest thing. The truth feels foreign and strange after so long spinning lies with a silver tongue. It tastes sweet though, especially with the way the feral rage in Akechi’s gaze shifts abruptly.

The constellation of freckles Akechi usually hides under expertly applied foundation disappear under a sudden flush of red. It might just as well be fury - the rage in Akechi is as deep as Ren’s own, perhaps even deeper, even if he doesn’t hide it as well - but Ren knows better. Akechi’s eyes widen, the tense line of his body easing ever so slightly. He’s said something the predator has not expected and has earned himself the shortest glimpse of the softness beneath for his trick.

“How sickenly sentimental of you.” The shutters come down. Ren expected as much but is still disappointed all the same. Akechi’s next words are more snarl than anything. “And what? You think someone like me would want anything to do with attic trash like you?”

There’s the fangs, the claws, the traits of a dangerous predator so carefully hidden coming out in the open. Akechi is shaking ever so subtly, hands curled into fists. At any moment, Ren knows, the other boy could lunge at him. Thin fingers and soft palms might find purchase on the column of Ren’s throat and squeeze the breath from his lungs and the life from his body. There is danger here, more than perhaps Ren has ever faced before.

He feels his mouth stretch into a small, soft smile, his heart as steady as ever as he meets the other boy’s furious gaze.

“No,” He says, shrugging lightly. “From where I’m sitting there’s almost nothing someone like you could want with someone like me.” 

The tension is back in Akechi’s frame, hands now open, flexing, his shoulders hunched towards his ears as Akechi sets a narrowed, blistering gaze upon him. Ren reaches out, uncaring of the danger of fangs and thorns as he runs his fingers across Akechi’s forehead and then down his freckled cheek. There’s the faintest scratch of stubble beneath his fingertips, a fine contrast to the soft skin along the curve of Akechi’s jaw.

“Princes don’t usually have much use for common thieves.” Ren says absently, his hand moving to cradle Akechi’s face gently in his palm. Thumb brushing lightly beneath Akechi’s eye before he withdraws, his hand falling between them once more. He does what thieves do and steals this moment like all the rest, tucks it away where no one will ever be able to take it back from him. “It’s thieves that covet the treasures they can’t have.”

He is too much Arsene in that moment, he thinks. Too much the devil may care thief enchanted by beauty, not enough the scared delinquent on the verge of losing what little he has left. 

It happens so often when he’s with Akechi. The need to be seen - not as he makes himself for the world to view, but as what he really is - overwhelms any good sense he might otherwise have. Ren wears so many masks that being completely bare of them makes him careless and stupid in his freedom. It will lead to his death, he thinks, as he watches Akechi’s face shift into an expression Ren can’t read.

There are a great many things Ren knows. Things he’s picked up from those with experience he lacks. Things he’s figured out as he went. Things he’s learned the hard way.

He knows that he and Akechi are of a kind. Masks and misdirections and a barely hidden need for retribution against a world that’s turned its back on them. 

He knows that he is in love with Akechi. Loves him like the air he needs to breathe and the blood he needs to live and the beautiful, priceless things he needs to steal. 

He knows that Akechi doesn’t quite know what love is, knows that Akechi views emotions as weapons to be used against others before they can be used against him.

He knows that for all he and Akechi have a bond between them, for all they are sides of a coin, for all they are more to each other than friends or rivals or enemies…Ren knows that Akechi will never let himself see these things.

In the moments following Ren’s words is heavy with silence.

He imagines the next few moments to be filled with the dark, feral rage that burns Akechi alive from the inside out. He wonders if he will be reduced to nothing but ashes and memories in the heat of it. Akechi doesn’t like being on the back foot. The next words the other boy speaks, undoubtedly, will be as sharp as a serpent’s tooth and just as full of venom. 

Provided Akechi even bothers with words.

Ren hasn’t discounted the very real threat that Akechi might just kill him.

He still can’t bring himself to care much about that.

Akechi’s shifts until he’s up on his knees, not quite towering over Ren but still above him. Ungloved hands move to settle on his shoulders and Ren wonders at the idea that these might be his last moments. He blinks and stares up at Akechi, waiting to see what the other boy will do.

A furrow has taken up space between Akechi’s eyes, his expression still that difficult impenetrable look that Ren can’t parse. Ren’s so caught in trying to map this new glimpse at the other boy, trying to make sense of what Akechi has no intention of being known, that he’s startled by the soft press of warm lips against his own.

His eyes flutter closed, hands moving to curl around Akechi’s waist, the need to touch and feel and be grounded guiding him along through the kiss.

He thinks of his stolen treasures. Cups of coffee and games of chess and Akechi’s voice as he reads passages of  _ The Left Hand of Darkness  _ while it rains outside. The way Akechi’s eyes glittered as they wandered the aquarium. How young he looked as he explained the tangle of pain and darkness that is his past. The feel of the glove in Akira’s hands as it was tossed to him, thoughts on the fact that a thrown glove means a challenge issues as Akechi said, but also implies the favor of a loved one.

He adds this moment in with those. The centerpiece of his collection, the single most valuable memory - this one not snatched away with quick fingers but something freely given.

The kiss is born of rushing emotions and a need for closeness that drives away reason. There is little experience or skill shown between their combined bumbling efforts. But it's warm and real and everything Ren has always wanted and never been able to steal for himself. Akechi moves his gloveless hands so they’re cradling Ren’s face, fingers tangling in Ren’s already messy hair. Ren’s lips were chapped from the weather and his own bad habits, but Akechi’s are soft and smooth. 

There is none of the fury he’s come to expect from the other boy, none of the jagged sharpness or savage thirst for victory. There is only Ren. There is only Goro. There is only the fragile thing they cradle between them, the bond that links them together so completely driving away the cold and dark of the world beyond.

Ren topples off the ledge he’s been balanced on, tumbling willingly into the yawning abyss that is everything he feels for Akechi Goro.

“You’re a fool.” Goro says after the kiss slowly ends. Ren might have taken them as the venomous words he’d expected earlier if it wasn’t for how softly the other boy speaks them against his skin. Their foreheads are pressed against one another, noses touching, close enough to share breath.

“Yes.” It’s easy to agree to something he knows is true. He’s a fool in so many ways, and most of all when it comes to the boy curled in his arms.

Goro rolls his eyes, mouth twisting into a frown. He doesn’t move though, doesn’t pull away or try and make more space between them. 

“I’m going to ruin you.” The brunette says, his voice low and thin. A warning, a promise, perhaps both. They taste the same when Ren leans forward to kiss Goro once more.

The Thieves will never forgive him.

He can’t bring himself to care.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going to be real, I'm not entirely certain what this is. But it wouldn't leave me alone so here we are haha.
> 
> In Tarot, upside down or reversed cards in a reading alter the meaning of the card. That fact combined with Maruki having a palace while also having a Persona inspired what ever this may be.
> 
> I wrote this from the perspective of Ren having a Palace but not realizing that fact. I'm planning on continuing this with a sequel that I've already started writing, though I'm unsure when that will be finished/ready to post. For now this stands as a stand alone until the second part is ready.
> 
> Comments are greatly appreciated! Thank you so much for reading!


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